by Various
"I'd certainly appreciate that," Turnbull said, rising from his seat. "I'll leave you to your work now, Dr. Drawford. I can be reached at the Mayfair Hotel."
The two men shook hands, and Turnbull left quickly.
* * * * *
Turnbull felt intuitively that he knew where Rawlings was. On the Centaurus planet--the planet of the City. But where was Duckworth? Reason said that he, too, was at the City, but under what circumstances? Was he a prisoner? Had he been killed outright?
Surely not. That didn't jibe with his leaving Earth the way he had. If someone had wanted him killed, they'd have done it on Earth; they wouldn't have left a trail to Sirius IV that anyone who was interested could have followed.
On the other hand, how could they account for Duckworth's disappearance, since the trail was so broad? If the police--
No. He was wrong. The trouble with intuitive thinking is that it tends to leave out whole sections of what, to a logical thinker, are pieces of absolutely necessary data.
Duckworth actually had no connection with Rawlings--no logical connection. The only thing the police would have to work with was the fact that Scholar Duckworth had started on a trip to Mendez and never made it any farther than Sirius IV. There, he had vanished. Why? How could they prove anything?
On the other hand, Turnbull was safe. The letters from Duckworth, plus his visit to Drawford, plus his acknowledged destination of Sirius IV, would be enough to connect up both cases if Turnbull vanished. Rawlings should know he couldn't afford to do anything to Turnbull.
Dave Turnbull felt perfectly safe.
He was in his hotel room at the Mayfair when the announcer chimed, five hours later. He glanced up from his book to look at the screen. It showed a young man in an ordinary business jumper, looking rather boredly at the screen.
"What is it?" Turnbull asked.
"Message for Dr. Turnbull from Rawlings Scientific Corporation," said the young man, in a voice that sounded even more bored than his face looked.
Turnbull sighed and got up to open the door. When it sectioned, he had only a fraction of a second to see what the message was.
It was a stungun in the hand of the young man.
It went off, and Turnbull's mind spiraled into blankness before he could react.
* * * * *
Out of a confused blur of color, a face sprang suddenly into focus, swam away again, and came back. The lips of the face moved.
"How do you feel, son?"
Turnbull looked at the face. It was that of a fairly old man who still retained the vitality of youth. It was lined, but still firm.
It took him a moment to recognize the face--then he recalled stereos he'd seen.
It was Scholar Jason Rawlings.
Turnbull tried to lift himself up and found he couldn't.
The scholar smiled. "Sorry we had to strap you down," he said, "but I'm not nearly as strong as you are, and I didn't have any desire to be jumped before I got a chance to talk to you."
Turnbull relaxed. There was no immediate danger here.
"Know where you are?" Rawlings asked.
"Centaurus City," Turnbull said calmly. "It's a three-day trip, so obviously you couldn't have made it in the five hours after I sent you the message. You had me kidnaped and brought here."
The old man frowned slightly. "I suppose, technically, it was kidnaping, but we had to get you out of circulation before you said anything that might ... ah ... give the whole show away."
Turnbull smiled slightly. "Aren't you afraid that the police will trace this to you?"
"Oh, I'm sure they would eventually," said Rawlings, "but you'll be free to make any explanations long before that time."
"I see," Turnbull said flatly. "Mind operation. Is that what you did to Scholar Duckworth?"
The expression on Scholar Rawling's face was so utterly different from what Turnbull had expected that he found himself suddenly correcting his thinking in a kaleidoscopic readjustment of his mind.
"What did you think you were on to, Dr. Turnbull?" the old man asked slowly.
Turnbull started to answer, but, at that moment the door opened.
The round, pleasant-faced gentleman who came in needed no introduction to Turnbull.
Scholar Duckworth said: "Hello, Dave. Sorry I wasn't here when you woke up, but I got--" He stopped. "What's the matter?"
"I'm just cursing myself for being a fool," Turnbull said sheepishly. "I was using your disappearance as a datum in a problem that didn't require it."
Scholar Rawlings laughed abruptly. "Then you thought--"
Duckworth chuckled and raised a hand to interrupt Rawlings. "Just a moment, Jason; let him logic it out to us."
"First take these straps off," said Turnbull. "I'm stiff enough as it is, after being out cold for three days."
Rawlings touched a button on the wall, and the restraining straps vanished. Turnbull sat up creakily, rubbing his arms.
"Well?" said Duckworth.
Turnbull looked up at the older man. "It was those first two letters of yours that started me off."
"I was afraid of that," Duckworth said wryly. "I ... ah ... tried to get them back before I left Earth, but, failing that, I sent you a letter to try to throw you off the track."
"Did you think it would?" Turnbull asked.
"I wasn't sure," Duckworth admitted. "I decided that if you had what it takes to see through it, you'd deserve to know the truth."
"I think I know it already."
"I dare say you do," Duckworth admitted. "But tell us first why you jumped to the wrong conclusion."
Turnbull nodded. "As I said, your letters got me worrying. I knew you must be on to something or you wouldn't have been so positive. So I started checking on all the data about the City--especially that which had come in just previous to the time you sent the letters.
"I found that several new artifacts had been discovered in Sector Nine of the City--in the part they call the Bank Buildings. That struck a chord in my memory, so I looked back over the previous records. That Sector was supposed to have been cleaned out nearly ninety years ago.
"The error I made was in thinking that you had been forcibly abducted somehow--that you had been forced to write that third letter. It certainly looked like it, since I couldn't see any reason for you to hide anything from me.
"I didn't think you'd be in on anything as underhanded as this looked, so I assumed that you were acting against your will."
Scholar Rawlings smiled. "But you thought I was capable of underhanded tactics? That's not very flattering, young man."
Turnbull grinned. "I thought you were capable of kidnaping a man. Was I wrong?"
Rawlings laughed heartily. "Touché. Go on."
* * * * *
"Since artifacts had been found in a part of the City from which they had previously been removed, I thought that Jim, here, had found a ... well, a cover-up. It looked as though some of the alien machines were being moved around in order to conceal the fact that someone was keeping something hidden. Like, for instance, a new weapon, or a device that would give a man more power than he should rightfully have."
"Such as?" Duckworth asked.
"Such as invisibility, or a cheap method of transmutation, or even a new and faster space drive. I wasn't sure, but it certainly looked like it might be something of that sort."
Rawlings nodded thoughtfully. "A very good intuition, considering the fact that you had a bit of erroneous data."
"Exactly. I thought that Rawlings Scientific Corporation--or else you, personally--were concealing something from the rest of us and from the Advisory Board. I thought that Scholar Duckworth had found out about it and that he'd been kidnaped to hush him up. It certainly looked that way."
"I must admit it did, at that," Duckworth said. "But tell me--how does it look now?"
Turnbull frowned. "The picture's all switched around now. You came here for a purpose--to check up on your own data. Tell me, is everything here on the level
?"
Duckworth paused before he answered. "Everything human," he said slowly.
"That's what I thought," said Turnbull. "If the human factor is eliminated--at least partially--from the data, the intuition comes through quite clearly. We're being fed information."
Duckworth nodded silently.
Rawlings said: "That's it. Someone or something is adding new material to the City. It's like some sort of cosmic bird-feeding station that has to be refilled every so often."
Turnbull looked down at his big hands. "It never was a trade route focus," he said. "It isn't even a city, in our sense of the term, no more than a birdhouse is a nest." He looked up. "That city was built for only one purpose--to give human beings certain data. And it's evidently data that we need in a hurry, for our own good."
"How so?" Rawlings asked, a look of faint surprise on his face.
"Same analogy. Why does anyone feed birds? Two reasons--either to study and watch them, or to be kind to them. You feed birds in the winter because they might die if they didn't get enough food."
"Maybe we're being studied and watched, then," said Duckworth, probingly.
"Possibly. But we won't know for a long time--if ever."
Duckworth grinned. "Right. I've seen this City. I've looked it over carefully in the past few months. Whatever entities built it are so far ahead of us that we can't even imagine what it will take to find out anything about them. We are as incapable of understanding them as a bird is incapable of understanding us."
"Who knows about this?" Turnbull asked suddenly.
"The entire Advanced Study Board at least," said Rawlings. "We don't know how many others. But so far as we know everyone who has been able to recognize what is really going on at the City has also been able to realize that it is something that the human race en masse is not yet ready to accept."
"What about the technicians who are actually working there?" asked Turnbull.
Rawlings smiled. "The artifacts are very carefully replaced. The technicians--again, as far as we know--have accepted the evidence of their eyes."
* * * * *
Turnbull looked a little dissatisfied. "Look, there are plenty of people in the galaxy who would literally hate the idea that there is anything in the universe superior to Man. Can you imagine the storm of reaction that would hit if this got out? Whole groups would refuse to have anything to do with anything connected with the City. The Government would collapse, since the whole theory of our present government comes from City data. And the whole work of teaching intuitive reasoning would be dropped like a hot potato by just those very people who need to learn to use it.
"And it seems to me that some precautions--" He stopped, then grinned rather sheepishly. "Oh," he said, "I see."
Rawlings grinned back. "There's never any need to distort the truth. Anyone who is psychologically incapable of allowing the existence of beings more powerful than Man is also psychologically incapable of piecing together the clues which would indicate the existence of such beings."
Scholar Duckworth said: "It takes a great deal of humility--a real feeling of honest humility--to admit that one is actually inferior to someone--or something--else. Most people don't have it--they rebel because they can't admit their inferiority."
"Like the examples of the North American Amerindian tribes." Turnbull said. "They hadn't reached the state of civilization that the Aztecs or Incas had. They were incapable of allowing themselves to be beaten and enslaved--they refused to allow themselves to learn. They fought the white man to the last ditch--and look where they ended up."
"Precisely," said Duckworth. "While the Mexicans and Peruvians today are a functioning part of civilization--because they could and did learn."
"I'd just as soon the human race didn't go the way of the Amerindians," Turnbull said.
"I have a hunch it won't," Scholar Rawlings said. "The builders of the City, whoever they are, are edging us very carefully into the next level of civilization--whatever it may be. At that level, perhaps we'll be able to accept their teaching more directly."
Duckworth chuckled. "Before we can become gentlemen, we have to realize that we are not gentlemen."
Turnbull recognized the allusion. There is an old truism to the effect that a barbarian can never learn what a gentleman is because a barbarian cannot recognize that he isn't a gentleman. As soon as he recognizes that fact, he ceases to be a barbarian. He is not automatically a gentleman, but at least he has become capable of learning how to be one.
"The City itself," said Rawlings, "acts as a pretty efficient screening device for separating the humble from the merely servile. The servile man resents his position so much that he will fight anything which tries to force recognition of his position on him. The servile slave is convinced that he is equal to or superior to his masters, and that he is being held down by brute force. So he opposes them with brute force and is eventually destroyed."
Turnbull blinked. "A screening device?" Then, like a burst of sunlight, the full intuition came over him.
Duckworth's round face was positively beaming. "You're the first one ever to do it," he said. "In order to become a member of the Advanced Study Board, a scholar must solve that much of the City's secret by himself. I'm a much older man than you, and I just solved it in the past few months.
"You will be the first Ph.D. to be admitted to the Board while you're working on your scholar's degree. Congratulations."
Turnbull looked down at his big hands, a pleased look on his face. Then he looked up at Scholar Duckworth. "Got a cigarette, Jim? Thanks. You know, we've still got plenty of work ahead of us, trying to find out just what it is that the City builders want us to learn."
Duckworth smiled as he held a flame to the tip of Turnbull's cigarette.
"Who knows?" he said quietly. "Hell, maybe they want us to learn about them!"
* * *
Contents
DESPOILERS OF THE GOLDEN EMPIRE
By Randall Garrett
A handful of men, and an incredible adventure--a few super-men, led by a fanatic, seeking to conquer a new world!
I
In the seven centuries that had elapsed since the Second Empire had been founded on the shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor. The First Empire had conquered most of the known universe by political intrigue and sheer military strength; it had fallen because that same propensity for political intrigue had gained over every other strength of the Empire, and the various branches and sectors of the First Empire had begun to use it against one another.
The Second Empire was politically unlike the First; it tried to balance a centralized government against the autonomic governments of the various sectors, and had almost succeeded in doing so.
But, no matter how governed, there are certain essentials which are needed by any governmental organization.
Without power, neither Civilization nor the Empire could hold itself together, and His Universal Majesty, the Emperor Carl, well knew it. And power was linked solidly to one element, one metal, without which Civilization would collapse as surely as if it had been blasted out of existence. Without the power metal, no ship could move or even be built; without it, industry would come to a standstill.
In ancient times, even as far back as the early Greek and Roman civilizations, the metal had been known, but it had been used, for the most part, as decoration and in the manufacture of jewelry. Later, it had been coined as money.
It had always been relatively rare, but now, weight for weight, atom for atom, it was the most valuable element on Earth. Indeed, the most valuable in the known universe.
The metal was Element Number Seventy-nine--gold.
To the collective mind of the Empire, gold was the prime object in any kind of mining exploration. The idea of drilling for petroleum, even if it had been readily available, or of mining coal or uranium would have been dismissed as impra
cticable and even worse than useless.
Throughout the Empire, research laboratories worked tirelessly at the problem of transmuting commoner elements into Gold-197, but thus far none of the processes was commercially feasible. There was still, after thousands of years, only one way to get the power metal: extract it from the ground.
So it was that, across the great gulf between the worlds, ship after ship moved in search of the metal that would hold the far-flung colonies of the Empire together. Every adventurer who could manage to get aboard was glad to be cooped up on a ship during the long months it took to cross the empty expanses, was glad to endure the hardships on alien terrain, on the chance that his efforts might pay off a thousand or ten thousand fold.
Of these men, a mere handful were successful, and of these one or two stand well above the rest. And for sheer determination, drive, and courage, for the will to push on toward his goal, no matter what the odds, a certain Commander Frank had them all beat.
II
Before you can get a picture of the commander--that is, as far as his personality goes--you have to get a picture of the man physically.
He was enough taller than the average man to make him stand out in a crowd, and he had broad shoulders and a narrow waist to match. He wasn't heavy; his was the hard, tough, wirelike strength of a steel cable. The planes of his tanned face showed that he feared neither exposure to the elements nor exposure to violence; it was seamed with fine wrinkles and the thin white lines that betray scar tissue. His mouth was heavy-lipped, but firm, and the lines around it showed that it was unused to smiling. The commander could laugh, and often did--a sort of roaring explosion that burst forth suddenly whenever something struck him as particularly uproarious. But he seldom just smiled; Commander Frank rarely went halfway in anything.
His eyes, like his hair, were a deep brown--almost black, and they were set well back beneath heavy brows that tended to frown most of the time.
Primarily, he was a military man. He had no particular flair for science, and, although he had a firm and deep-seated grasp of the essential philosophy of the Universal Assembly, he had no inclination towards the kind of life necessarily led by those who would become higher officers of the Assembly. It was enough that the Assembly was behind him; it was enough to know that he was a member of the only race in the known universe which had a working knowledge of the essential, basic Truth of the Cosmos. With a weapon like that, even an ordinary soldier had little to fear, and Commander Frank was far from being an ordinary soldier.